SBOCommentary: Air Leaks
Why Not Fix The Leaks In Our Horns? By Harold Snyder
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iquids and gases, by their very nature, tend to escape from where they are supposed to be and not do what they are supposed to do. As a player of a musical instrument, we are interested in the mixture of gases we call
air – our air from our lungs that we blow into a tube. Our breath is intended to do a particular thing as we blow it into our musical instruments, but if it leaks out, it cannot fulfill its purpose and there are consequences. Let me illustrate this by looking at some common problems.
“Any leak will keep the instrument from playing at its best.”
14 School Band and Orchestra, April 2011
When it comes to water, there are many interesting examples. Some may remember the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his country by plugging a hole in the dyke with his finger. A gap in a roof during a rainstorm can damage a house and cause costly repairs. A damaged garden hose will not effectively take care of a garden. A hole in a car’s gasoline tank or radiator could keep it from making it to the ball game. A leak in a tire will cause a flat. And if it is five degrees below zero, we don’t want warm air making an exit through the cracks in doors and windows. If we are hosting company we don’t want the air mattress to go flat. And God forbid that we get a leak in our medical oxygen tank. When we discover these leaks, we try to get them fixed as soon as possible. Why then do we put up with leaks, even small leaks, in our musical instruments? We need this wasted air! In reality, it takes a lot of our air to play a musical instrument. The mouth air pressure used for normal speech is about five to six millimeters of mercury (mmHg). One study listed the various mouth pressures needed to play different instruments. For example in mmHg, the alto sax took 56.2, clarinet took 86.4, flute took 77.8, and the trombone took 126.0. When this amount of air pressure is needed to play a musical instrument it is crucial that